News Story

Over $14B spent on games in US in 2012

According to the NPD, over $14B was spent on videogames in the United States. This actually represents a decline in sales of 9% compared to 2011, when gamers spent over $16.3B.

The study noted that gamers spent $8.8B on physical software, which includes used and rental copies, which was down 21% from $11.25B in 2011. However, where physical sales dropped, digital sales, including games, downloadable content, mobile games, social network games and game subscriptions went up 16% from $5B to 5.9B.

NPB analyst Liam Callahan noted in the report, "When including all other forms of content spending outside of new physical games, the 2012 U.S. games market was more than twice as large as the total spending on new physical games alone. There were divergent trends when looking at content spending in 2012 as a whole, with a decrease of 21 percent in spending on physical content while digital content spending grew 16 percent; both formats combined for a total decline of 9 percent for the year."